Empires of Flux & Anchor sr-2

by Jack L. Chalker

  “But—like that? What will people make of her?”

  “People know of her,” Suzl replied. “Everybody knows her face and what happened to her.” She paused a moment. “You know more of this spell stuff than I do, even though I’m the one with a permanent spell myself. You know she should be free. That Soul Rider, or whatever the hell it is, is in there for a reason, too, and it’s not to jump up into trees and eat fruit. I think maybe you’re holding onto her. You never had her, and now that you do, you just don’t want to let her go.”

  Kasdi sighed. “Maybe you’re right—but my concerns are real.”

  Suzl thought a moment. “It’s been a long time. Has she seen her family? I mean, the folks that raised her?”

  “No. Most can’t come; the rest won’t go into Flux.”

  “O.K., then. That’s our next destination anyway. We’re sidebar stringing for Laconner through this cluster.” A sidebar stringer was a junior in the trade who had not yet earned enough to have his or her own route or had not found a wizard as a client and sponsor. They ran mini-trains off the main one, allowing the stringer with business to bypass less profitable stops while still serving them. “Let us take her with us to Anchor Logh to see her folks. If it works out, fine. If it doesn’t, well, at least we’ll know who’s right.”

  Kasdi considered it, and felt curiously reluctant to go along with it, although Suzl’s logic was impeccable. She kept trying to come up with reasons not to permit it, but stopped after a moment. Perhaps they’re right, she thought guiltily. Maybe I am just trying to hold on to her. “All right. But. you bring her back here with a progress report before going elsewhere.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Uh—Suzl?”

  “Yeah, Cass?”

  “How much is Mervyn paying Ravi to do all this?”

  She chuckled. “Not much. Just a good lead on a possible sponsor for an independent train.”

  “I thought so. All right, then. If she’s willing, go with my blessings.”

  Suzl turned to Spirit, who had lost interest and was studying the wrinkled skin of the fruit with absolute fascination. Suzl hesitated to interrupt her for a moment, wondering just what the girl was seeing that was so interesting, but she tapped Spirit’s shoulder and the girl looked up. Suzl backed away and made out in mime, Would you like to go with us?

  The girl’s reaction was pure joy and excitement, and she even did a little dance to indicate her desire. She definitely wanted out, and the sooner the better.

  Kasdi gave up. The reaction was too deep to ignore.

  Ravi had to return to the train to work out his routings so that they could still make their stops and relink with the main train on schedule, but Suzl remained for a while with Kasdi.

  “I can tell you’re less than thrilled with Ravi,” she commented. “I’m trying not to judge. You have to live your own life.”

  “You’ve been isolated from the real world a long time, Cass. You live here with the Church, and with your powers you don’t think twice about skipping along in the void. I don’t have any Flux powers, remember. I’m just a dugger, and so if I want to travel and live my life, I need protection, and that means compromising.”

  “He’s not a major wizard, but he has some real power,” Kasdi noted. “You know he has some personal spells on you.”

  Suzl shrugged. “I figured as much. He was born into the trade, and they don’t believe in using Flux power to change themselves. It’s against their code. Fix up, heal, yeah, but nothing more. So he was real short for a guy, and kind of frail, and he grew up worshipping those big hunks. If he didn’t have the power, he couldn’t be in this business. The stringers don’t have much respect for guys who like guys or girls who like girls, so when we crossed paths, I was what he needed. I’m a woman who was what he wants. He’s a stringer with the power and I need that. We’re kind of loose. I can do most anything I want.”

  “It wasn’t just fat that grew those unnatural breasts.”

  “Sure. But that power also gave me the back and muscle support, so it doesn’t bother me. Same with my other self, which is also not proportional. But, you see, I like it this way—all of it. I’m a dugger, Cass, and there’s a lot worse ways than mine for duggers to be that are no fun at all. So I work as his foreman and play at being his wife, and I got no worries in Flux. I’m not in love with the little wimp, but if you have to be owned by somebody, there are worse people to be owned by and not many better.”

  Kasdi sighed. “I suppose you’re right. Perhaps I am too insulated from the real world. From here, surrounded by devout women and looking over maps showing the spread of the Church, it’s easy to forget that so little has really changed. You really don’t like to think of things that way.”

  “People stay people, with all the good and all the bad. Things have changed for the better. The Flux is safer, the Anchors better run, and there’s a whole new sense of learning in both places—it’s good what you did. You don’t see that dull look in people’s eyes so much anymore, the idea that this is what is and what will be. You gave ’em a future, a sense of change that excites ’em. But Flux is still Flux and power is still power. Short of making everybody into slaves, you’re not going to change the way people are, and if you did that, then why bother?”

  Sister Kasdi sighed. “Maybe you’re right. It’s funny—you’re maybe the only one I can tell this to, but I have doubts. Lots of doubts all the time. I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. I wonder if all this is real or just some false wizardry, self-delusion. Is this really the Holy Mother’s will, or am I just another Fluxlord with too big ambitions kidding myself along? I don’t know. When you have this kind of power, both political and Flux, it’s impossible to tell your own delusions from what’s real. You know, sometimes I envy Spirit. No worries, no cares, no responsibilities. And I get the idea she knows what’s true and real far better than I.”

  “You’re better than you think you are,” Suzl told her. “The old boy is right about one thing, though. You left yourself nothing but work and worry and responsibility. No fun, no vacations, no way to just let loose and relax. I couldn’t have stood it this long, but if you don’t figure out a way to take a breather, it’ll eventually crack even you. All that’s bottled up inside of you with no way to get out. If it becomes too much, it’ll explode.”

  “I know, I know. If you think of an answer to it all, let me know. In the meantime—take good care of her, Suzl.”

  “That’s one worry you shouldn’t have.”

  The big, hairy, muscular man was playing cards in the Gotron Saloon in Anchor Fhaxtrod when a younger man came in and caught his eye. The big man played out his hand, and won, then excused himself from the game and went into a back room with the newcomer.

  “Well?”

  “Not much. As near as we can figure out, there was no way that wound didn’t mean nearly instant death. Nobody on the scene had any doubts at all. Still, when the stringers sorted out their dead, his body wasn’t there. It was never found, although that’s not unusual. There was that tremendous spell from the girl and a lot of confusion and there are always a lot of missing.”

  “And Jomo?”

  “He showed up in Globbus a couple of weeks later and got all the survivors together, paid ’em off and disbanded it. Most of the other duggers signed on with other trains, but he didn’t. Stayed in Globbus for several months, then went up north in the wild, settled down, and got a job as a bouncer in a saloon in Tregia, one of those dugger’s haven Fluxlands. He’s real smart about some things, almost retarded in others, kind of like a good trained animal. Real faithful to his boss, but not any boss will do. I’m convinced, though, that he couldn’t possibly have thought up anything like this. Everybody thinks that he thinks it’s really Matson, so he’s back on the job.”

  Coydt van Haaz scratched his chin a moment. “So somebody changed themselves into Matson, somebody who knew him well enough to impersonate him eighteen years later so exactly that he can fool
even somebody close to Matson like Jomo, then hunts up the big dugger and goes gunning for me. I don’t buy it, Yorek. It doesn’t ring true. Still, if Matson had somehow lived, where’s he been all these years? He’s a false wizard—he has no real powers. Can somebody like that just up and give up the stringer trade that was his life, leave all that credit wealth behind, and, even transformed by somebody with power, just take up another life and not betray himself all that time? Even if he could, he’s too in touch with today. He knows the present stringer codes and exactly which people to talk to and where they are. That’s not somebody even the stringers consider long dead. Either way, none of it fits.”

  “Except that if it is Matson, his reappearance now makes sense. Spirit was his daughter, too, although he told Gilly he only learned about her when we hit. He’ll live by the stringer code and try and nail you. And if he fails, another will come with two to avenge, then three—well, you know the route.”

  Coydt nodded. “I can take anybody head-on in Anchor or Flux, but I don’t want to get backshot by some jerk I can’t even see while walking down an alley or across a street. If this operation wasn’t going along, I’d lay the bait, face it down, then change into new people for Anchor, but it’s important that the others be able to reach me in a hurry. This is damned inconvenient, Yorek. Old Saint Kasdi I figured on, but not some masquerading killer stalking me in Anchor. We’re just going to have to tighten up our guard and keep doing it the way we planned, that’s all. But the first man who works for me who botches the job and doesn’t get killed protecting me will wish he had been killed. You spread the word. Within a year it won’t matter who’s stalking who.”

  “You’ve got the best covering you. It won’t be easy for him, whoever he is. In the meantime, we’ll keep digging.”

  “Dig him out, Yorek. If you do, we’ll have our fun with him in Flux and settle this whole problem.”

  8

  WONDROUS PATHWAYS

  The experiment had worked out very well indeed for all concerned except, perhaps, Sister Kasdi. Spirit loved the excitement and animation of the stringer train, the animals and people, and they also took to her. Her picture had made her familiar to almost everyone during the kidnapping episode, and her story and her curse were also common knowledge.

  At first people did treat her as something of a freak, and there was a great deal of pity as well, but it soon passed as the novelty wore off and she was simply accepted. It was tougher on the men than the women, for she was beautiful and alluring, but the few who tried to force themselves on her in Flux found that merely touching her when she didn’t want to be touched could produce a painful electric shock. The more someone persisted, the more painful and prolonged the lesson. None persisted for very long.

  Spirit seemed endlessly fascinated with the void as well. It looked different to her now, the continuous random sparkles of energy not only beautiful but somehow not at all the random effect that everyone else assumed. There was a structure, an order, to the whole of Flux that seemed suddenly clear to her.

  She quickly learned the stringer’s secret and art. The void was no void at all, she found, but an intricate network of crisscrossing lines of weak but permanent energy. Following these “strings” was like following a road, although she didn’t have, and would probably never have, the stringer’s knowledge and skill to be able to read exactly where she was on a string in relation to the next destination and in relation to the whole world. Still, she wondered at the fact that these strings were certainly human-made; yet she could see and understand them in apparent violation of the spell. She could even tell which ones were main strings and which led to water pockets and emergency supply caches, for these strings were coded both by color and by a mathematical structure that not only said what they were but also left a signature of sorts of their maker—and other signatures were overlaid in fascinating complexity atop the primary one.

  Every time they progressed along a string, a new, very faint ghost signature was etched into the thousands, perhaps millions of others. She began to realize that in the strings was a record of all who had ever used them, all very minor and very faint but nonetheless present. One could even, on the closest of study, read the exact order in which those string echoes had been laid down and identify a pattern unique to each individual. She, too, left a slight signature as they progressed, a mathematically unique coding. With knowledge of a wizard’s or stringer’s symbol and the sense of time laid out mathematically in the record, she realized she could actually track someone across the void by taking only the freshest trace or retrace their path and tell from whence they had come.

  In just the few days of travel to Anchor Logh, she had intuitively and deductively learned more about strings than all but a handful of people ever learned with years of teaching and experience. She could not know this, nor that even the best stringers and wizards could read and sort out only the most recent paths, the rest blending into the original pattern. It was not her degree of Flux power alone that gave her this ability to read, see, sort, interpret, and remember those millions of traces, but also the new internal language and manner in which her brain now processed information.

  Anchor was different, yet in some ways the same. A blade of grass was not simply that, but a complex structure built in a specific pattern. She felt as if she could peer into its very makeup, which, in a sense, she could. Each tree, flower, leaf, even a blade of grass was unique and different and those differences were endlessly fascinating to her. Her behavior seemed often odd, unusual, and childlike to those watching her, but it was instead highly intellectual and highly complex. She was seeing in a way they could never see and understanding in a way they could never understand.

  Anchor Logh was at once wondrous and painful. Here she had grown up, and here she was well-known. The pity and grief from family and friends was very hard to bear, and she longed for some way to tell them that it was all right, that she would not go back to being one of them even if she could.

  She drew crowds in Anchor, of course. Lots of pity mixed with an endless fascination with the bizarre that was a part of human nature. She didn’t mind it from strangers at all, and the children were wonderful, treating her as some sort of magical fairy sprite. She played silly games with them and drew out their laughter and felt well-rewarded.

  And yet, the more human she was in the basics of emotion, the less she became in other areas. The psychological changes in her accelerated with the trip, and the journey home had gotten out of her system the one last link to her past. She liked people and enjoyed being with them, but she could no longer in the least understand them. Slowly but systematically, the bits and pieces of what it was like to be one of them were being erased or shut off in her mind. At Hope she had separated herself forever from their form of existence. Now, in Anchor Logh, she crossed the last mental hold to the past. She not only could no longer remember not being as she was; she could no longer even conceive of it. Once she left the farm with Suzl for the gate and Flux once more, she erased the past completely from her mind. All of the human culture into which she’d been born and raised was now irrelevant to her, and what was irrelevant did not exist.

  The last link was broken with the return to Hope. The point had been made and proven. Short of her mother using her powers to force her to remain, a prisoner, she would not be contained, and she wasn’t even sure if her mother had the power to restrain her. Kasdi, however, had no intention of doing so. She surrendered to the inevitable and let her daughter go.

  For the next few weeks, Spirit stayed with Ravi and Suzl’s stringer train, making stops at three more Fluxlands and one other Anchor that was quite different than Anchor Logh. Everything was different, everything a wonder, but still she began to feel confined. As long as she was under their wing, she was trapped, in a way, in a culture she could no longer understand.

  The duggers, of course, treated her as if she were one of their own, which in a very real sense she was, but they, too, were part of a life
different from hers. The old Spirit would have found most of them horrible, grotesque, bizarre—but she just found them a new series of unique wonders. Suzl was the biggest shock and wonder, though, since she didn’t seem to be a true dugger at all. Yet, once, when they had set up tents and camped out for two days in a Pocket waiting for the main stringer train to rendezvous with them, she had playfully peered inside Suzl’s tent (although she would never enter it) and seen her in the midst of changing clothes. She’d been bending over, displaying the largest ass Spirit had ever seen, and it was a shock to see those enormous breasts actually touching the floor of the tent. Spirit could not imagine what having that sort of frontage would feel like. Then Suzl had heard her, straightened up and turned around, and she saw the male organ so huge that it almost reached the dugger’s knees. Suzl grinned at the shock on Spirit’s face, and then the girl knew that this was a dugger indeed, in her own way as inhuman as the most deformed of the ones on the train.

  Suzl started to reach for her special undergarments needed to manage and work with her enlarged deformities, but then stopped, winked, and came out of the tent just as she was. Ravi was off, and there were only a few duggers about who paid no attention at all. Suzl was so short without the boots that the top of her head barely came up to the nipples on Spirit’s breasts, but there was something in the strange man/woman’s bizarre appearance that was strangely erotic. Both were a bit surprised at what went on, but Spirit was amazed at both her own near-insatiable enjoyment and Suzl’s nearly infinite capacity and variety.

  For Suzl’s part, she had never intended it, but found it inevitable; Spirit was so beautiful that it had seemed impossible not to lust after her. Suzl was neither sorry nor ashamed, but instead felt some of the envy Cass had evidenced. She loved men and women equally, for she was partly each, and she enjoyed being the way she was. What she had not enjoyed was the confinement of Ravi and sidebar stringing, or the necessity for all those special undergarments and all that play-acting at normalcy. She was far more of a freak than Spirit, but unlike Spirit, who never thought of herself that way, Suzl loved the very idea of it.